Consumers’ price sensitivity (CPS) during times of a financial-hardship event: a critical literature review

Despite the apparent connection between consumers’ price sensitivity (CPS) and financial hardship events, studies exploring this connection are limited, particularly around resultant shopping behaviour. Reasons for this could be the widespread belief that consumers will no doubt cope negatively (e.g., favouring cheaper brands or switching to lower-quality products) when facing financial hardship or scarcity (Allenby & Lenk, 1995; Srivastava & Gupta, 2022). Hence, the connection seemingly lacks originality or novelty to warrant further investigation. Beyond financial-hardship events, there are many studies on CPS in the consumption context of utilitarian products (e.g. groceries) (Graciola et al., 2018). The CPS’s popularity in this consumption context is understandable and expected, considering people frequently use prices as a proxy indicator of perceived quality and risk to inform their purchase decision (Wakefield & Inman, 2003).